Unforgivable - Utilgiveligt

There is one statement that is completely unforgivable: THAT'S JUST THE WAY I AM.

Read: I know perfectly well I should confront the characteristics that make it necessary to say this, but I am too

1. lazy

2. conceited

3. afraid

4. all of the above - however paradoxical it sounds. The human mind is capable of all sorts of excuses & self-delusion. That's just the way it is. So DO something. Even if psychoanalyzing yourself seems obnoxiously egocentric & the quest can give some silly-sounding results, it's worth it. It will eventually get you there.

THAT'S JUST THE WAY I AM is unforgiveable!

Der er én erklæring der er fuldstændig utilgiveligt: SÅDAN ER JEG BARE.

Læs: Jeg er udmærket godt klar over, at jeg burde arbejde med mig selv og de karaktertræk, der gør denne erklæring nødvendigt, men jeg er for

1. dovn

2. indbildsk

3. bange

4. dem allesammen - selvom det lyder paradoksalt. Menneskesindet er i stand til alle slags undskyldninger og selvbidrag. Det er bare sådan det er. Så GØR dog noget. Selvom selv-psykoanalyse kan virke som værre navlepilleri og søgen kan give nogle skæve resultater, er den det værd. Du når det til sidst.

SÅDAN ER JEG BARE er utilgiveligt!

Overpopulation

Overpopulation - scary stuff, that. Anyway it scares me. A lot of us enlightened westerners imagine modern utopias where the local society is as connected & supportive as back in the bad old days, back when being pushed out meant death or at least misery. There will be roof gardens with beehives, solar panels & a big windmill at the end of the road. Homegrown produce, recycling, zero growth, fellowship. It's already happening here & there. Neighborhood dinner clubs, urban greenhouses, electric cars, clothes & tool swaps, people taking care of each other. Even old fogies get a chance to form elder communes - olle kolle in Danish - that will stave off the inevitable trip to the nursing home. It's beautiful.

       It's also exclusive. Many million people on the planet are nowhere in these cozy plans. The planners ignore them because there's nothing else to do. They/we/I wish they would just go away.

Of course they won't. They will keep on keeping on as they always have, having many children, using up all the resources they can find, settling in nature preserves & burning the wood, poaching, generally making a mess. They are a whole lot better than the mining, logging & oil companies out to grab whatever they can, aided & abetted by various multi-nationals & corrupt governments, but they are still in the way of the modern utopia. They are just so annoying.

       The best thing for the planet would be to exactly achieve zero growth, stop producing a bunch of useless luxury products, dumb-ass toys no kid would miss, gas guzzler cars. And pop off half the population. Robots are going to take most of the jobs anyway, not? So as a little mental exercise, who has to go?

       We'll start with pedophiles, human traffickers, wife-&-kid beaters, tyrants & torturers, rapists. No protests there, right? Moving on to terrorists, bigtime bullies & fanatics of every stripe, swindlers, gangsters, psychopaths (one might be your boss), the mining, logging & oil companies + those who cooperate with them (okay - going to be impractical), corrupt politicians generally (there went the entire governments of India, Pakistan & points east + some of ours), drug dealers, the wolves of Wall Street & the fashionistas who tell perfectly normal girls they are fat.

        Next? This is where innocent people take a hit. Very retarded or senile & others who are almost or completely helpless + anybody dying of AIDS - or anything else, I guess. Then who? Well, here we come to the great mass of foreign humanity with no prospects, a gang of kids they can't care for or educate because they are ignorant, lazy or out to breed a million little Muslims; people I will never get to know. (The very few I do know - because they made it up here - I often like a lot.) I don't want to think about them. They are just in the way. Dang, that's annoying! 

Philip Seymour & the 10 others

Just read - a week after the fact - a heartfelt tribute to Philip Seymour Hoffman in Time magazine. It's written by his friend & fellow addict, the screenwriter Aaron Sorkin. It's down to earth & sincere & made me feel marginally better. A Late Quartet finally got to Denmark & I had just seen it when I heard the news. (My favorite remains Almost Famous. "Of course I'm home on Saturday night. I'm not cool.") Sorkin quotes Philip Seymour in one of those eerily astute statements that turn out to predict exactly what happens.

"If one of us dies of an overdose, probably 10 people who were about to won't."

Doubtless absolutely right. My daughter - who was also a big fan like me - summed it up well & directly: "What a dickhead." Yep - that he was. Even so, I wish Philip Seymour hadn't & the other 10 had. Truly unfair thought & I know it, but I also know I am not alone. Okay, 'thought' is probably the wrong word; it's something more basic, something we all feel sometimes. My further thoughts on this sort of thinking are the subject of the next blog.

Dang, Philip Seymour! I would have liked to see your King Lear.

Justice in India / Retfærdighed i Indien

Nice to see that 3 men were arrested for the rape of a Danish woman in New Delhi. Nicer still that rape is now a capital offense. Nicest of all if this is actually enforced when Indian women are raped - even though they don't bring in tourist dollars. And imagine if Indian society takes a long hard look at their view of women, now that India is the new Silicon Valley, the big I in BRIC & even Bollywood films depict women with brains & influence as well as amazing beauty.

This time I hope life imitates art!

Godt at se at 3 mænd blev anholdt for at have voldtaget en dansk kvinde i New Delhi. Endnu bedre at voldtægt nu er anerkendt som en alvorlig forbrydelse. Allerbedst hvis denne lov ren faktisk bliver håndhævet når indiske kvinder bliver voldtaget - selvom de ikke trækker turist dollars til landet. Og bare tænk, hvis det indiske samfund kigger alvorligt på dets kvindesyn, nu hvor Indien er den ny Silicon Valley, den store I i BRIC og sågar Bollywood nu viser kvinder med hjerne og indflydelse oveni forbløffende skønhed.
Denne gang håber jeg at livet efterligner kunst!

New Year Resolutions

How goes it with your New Year resolutions? My main one is that I still want to be here this time next year & in good health. Not so complicated, that one, even from this guilty segment of society known as the Elderly Burden. Yep, not only are there waaay too many of us aging Baby Boomers, we're also poised to go on & on. Last week we lost Peter O'Toole at 81 & Joan Fontaine at 96. (No, they have nothing to do with Boomers, but I was a fan of both.) Now I'd rather copy Ms. Fontaine, who died at home, presumably just from old age. Selfish, that, but I'll try to Make a Contribution to the local society along the way. That's also expected of this generation, mainly in the form of volunteer work. Fair enough.

     Other New Year resolutions? Drop a few kilos & take a load off my arthritic knees. Write more, write regularly, do an online course if that's what it takes. Exercise regularly is a no-brainer but luckily that just comes naturally. If you're hyper, you're hyper & it doesn't stop because you pass 65, you just tire out faster. I know because I am & I do. Take up yoga. Write more. Said that last year too - & the year before that. This year I'll take it more seriously because of a couple of concrete projects that augur well. Meditate more & get to the bottom of my penchant for wasting energy on regrets about stuff I can't do anything about anyway. My daughter gets after me for that - clever girl.

      All my December/Christmas To Do Lists start with "Cook a lot & love everybody" because that way I know at least one thing will get done. Keeping that thought too, all year. Write more.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Shu-bi-dua

Now it's officially Christmas season; I heard Shu-bi-dua's Christmas song - Nu det' Jul - on the radio this morning. Shu-bi-dua is a Danish group from way back, currently on hold because the lead singer had a blood clot to the brain but is recovering. He says that like a Shubinator, he'll be back. JUL is pronounced Yule - you probably guessed - so it's a true Yuletide carol.

     Shu-bi-dua's Christmas song was the first Danish pop Christmas carol I heard when I got here in 1973 & it's classic:

"Jesus is born on the second floor / of Magasin du Nord (the classiest Copenhagen department store)
He waves when you press a foot pedal / says Good Day to his mother."

Jesus bliver født på anden sal / i Magasin du Nord

Han vinker når du trykker på en fodpedal / siger Goddag til sin mor.

That rhymes in Danish, of course & charms in any language. Such a good summing up of our western Christian tradition: the birth of Christ & all out consumerism. Most stores have Santas, with or without the elves, but the birth of Christ IS still there somewhere & kids still learn about it in school. I hope that does not change. No matter what beliefs all the parents of any given school class may have, this is the one that formed Western civilization. Even the shopping for gifts nobody really needs & half the time can't afford might remind us that it's somebody's birthday, somebody big. 

      I found the coolest fold-out & stand-up children's book in the gift shop of the National Gallery. You might know it's originally Italian; there they still do the whole Nativity scene in unabashed Renaissance style, angels all over the place, where Danes & Americans are more restrained - or self-conscious? Can't wait to go through it with the grandchildren. I've got The Night Before Christmas in fold-out too but this Italian number is really a work of art. Like the Shu-bi-dua Christmas song, that also mentions God's small angels - who might just be regular kids looking forward to Christmas. Funny thing is - most of the Danes I know don't feel Christmas is officially here until they hear Last Christmas by Wham. Okay - a bunch of us old bats ogled George Michael until he made public his sexual orientation, but for me it's Shu-bi-dua every year.

Hope it can get me in the mood to decorate ....

Cheers, eveybody. 

Good ships & bad business

Reading up to be 'exam censor' in January at the maritime academy where I taught English for a couple of years & now get called in sometimes as the second opinion at oral exams.

The articles are all about the latest developments on the high seas. Shipping is a huge international project that has often been criticized for polluting the air & ocean, & introducing invasive species that take over the defenseless areas where they land. All true BUT shipping is cleaning up its act fast. The IMO - International Maritime Organization - has imposed hefty restrictions on emissions, ballast water dumping & handling of the heavy fuel oil that still powers most large container ships. Actually, it's more like tar, the gloopiest residue from the bottom of the refining tank. Technology is hurrying to comply with all the rules & change the whole game - from slower steaming, Sky Sails to catch the wind & reduce fuel consumption, liquefied natural gas as fuel, exhaust scrubbers & oil filtration.

Truly impressed by this Shipping News - GOOD NEWS!

Then I read my mail from Avaaz, the watchdog online petition gang, & that was the BAD NEWS.

Once again Wikileaks has broken a story that the creeps who run Monsanto, among other heartless multinationals, hoped would never make it into the light. It's called TTP.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a huge, ultra-secret deal among twelve major countries & especially major corporations. It would allow them to sue our governments for passing laws that protect us, but reduce their profits! This could apply to everything from labeling GMO foods to protecting internet freedom.

The leaked Trans-Pacific Partnership drafts read like a big fat Christmas wish-list for big business. A system of courts could be used to limit access to cheap generic medicines in favor of brand names & even allow cigarette companies to sue governments over health regulations that they say threaten profits! It’s almost too crazy to be true. No wonder Monsanto & Co. are keeping mum.

Good going Wikileaks! Leaked texts have shocked politicians & citizens from Chile, New Zealand & Australia. They are pushing back on the corporate bullying. Three out of 12 sounds pretty lame, but it would seemingly be enough to unbalance the deal. Maybe others would see the error of their ways then.

I signed that petition immediately & fired off emails to ministers in Australia & New Zealand. Hope it all does some good. I would like the new spirit of corporate social responsibility to be more than a myth, but can't take it seriously just yet.

So - the shipping news is good. Boycott Monsanto & ship with Maersk! There must be some good guys out there in business. Not? Um ... maybe not ...